Christianity

Crowley's hostility to Christianity was vitriolic and intense.
There are many Thelemites who are equally hostile and would not
accept or admit that any part of Christianity, esoteric or not, is
part of Thelema. This utter exclusion of Christianity does not
reflect Crowley's complex views on the subject. From his texts a few
starting points are clear.

Biographically, Crowley's hatred of Christianity began with his
upbringing in the oppressively conservative Protestant tradition
known as the Plymouth Brethren, to which his parents belonged.
Moralistic and restrictive, the Plymouth Brethren were also obsessed
with the Book of Revelation. His mother called the rebellious Crowley
"the Beast" early in life well before the Book of the Law confirmed
him in this title.

Crowley was a self-identified opponent of Christianity who also
practiced Jewish and Christian occult traditions and put the works of
Christian mystics on his required reading lists. The key to this
contradiction lies in his æonic doctrine. He believed that
somehow the Æon of Osiris went horribly wrong, but the Osiris
legend remained the natural formula of the time even though its chief
exemplar, mainstream Christianity, was corrupt. He is not clear on
the details, but the theory appears to be that the Gnostics (a
preoccupation of occultists late in the 19th century) were sex
magicians who blended Paganism with Christianity and held the sexual
inner keys of the formula of the Eucharist of the Catholic Mass, a
symbolic form of the secret carried down by the occult underground
through the centuries. Crowley's Gnostic Mass, one of his most
frequently practiced rituals today, is meant to restore that secret
to its proper place. Given this and Crowley's reliance on the
reinterpreted Book of Revelation, it would not be far off the mark to
call Thelema itself a form of esoteric Christianity.

As mentioned above with respect to the Tree of Life and tables of
correspondence, taking the symbols of other religions and placing
them into new systems is often considered offensive by believers. An
examination of the table of correspondence associated with
Christianity in Crowley's 777 reveals a wicked sense of humor at
work. This together with his vitriolic hostility to Christianity
suggests that he was aware that reducing others' traditions to short
notes in a table would not be appreciated and that the Christian
elements of his system were at least in part meant to annoy
traditional believers. However, it would be a mistake to say that the
Gnostic Mass and similar Christian elements in Thelema are low
parodies merely meant to offend; many Christian symbols are at the
very heart of Crowley's system and evidence demonstrates his sincere
devotion to them. For Crowley as for other satirists there was
pleasure in using Christian symbols in ways likely to offend, but
that was not his primary motive in using symbols like the Rose and
Cross.

The Literalist might say this: Christianity is the curse of
the world. Those who cling to it in the new Æon of Horus are
like those who enslave themselves to the undead and they will be
banished when the Sun shall fully rise. When the Prophet wrote "the
Christians to the lions!" He did not speak idly or in jest.
Christians are the enemies of Freedom and they do not even understand
the few fragments of the Secret Tradition that are perverted in their
rites. Only when they are all gone can we truly become as "a strong
Man who goeth forth to do his Will."

The Chaotic might say this: Christianity is the hand with
the stick that has instilled shame and guilt as virtues so we have a
whole society of mass-produced clone-farm humanoids who are too
afraid to think. The way to dissolve these shackles on a mass scale
is through a culture of individuality and the reality distortion
effect that has become the dominant paradigm already. Christians are
plodding, literal mechanoids who would probably lock up all the
magicians if they could get away with it.

The Skeptic might say this: The freethinking movement has
had an interface with Christianity longer than it has with occultism,
which has often been rigid, dogmatic, and prone to doctrinal warfare.
Christianity in both Catholic and Protestant forms has done more than
its share of harm in Western culture, and committed injustices on a
large scale when it has held power. These failings are well known to
us because we come from the Christian culture. There are few
religions that seem much better when they acquire political
ascendancy, at least from a perspective of human rights, but we are
less aware of the similar problems in other cultures and so we are
willing to embrace spiritual traditions from cultures with histories
of religious abuses such as India, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, Egypt,
Persia, and so on. Of the many faiths, Christianity is among those
adapting most quickly to the modern world and the idea of human
rights, and now at the start of the 21st century liberal theologies
are taken seriously in many mainstream denominations and in Vatican
II. It is hard to find a Thelemic group as devoted to pluralism as
liberal Christian groups and their close relatives (e.g., the Society
of Friends, Unitarian-Universalism, Matthew Fox -- some Vatican II
documents are more progressive than Thelemic consensus).
Authoritarian modes were established by Crowley and persist to this
day; in the unlikely event that Thelema rose to political power, its
authoritarianism suggests that it would be no better than
Christianity or other faiths in this regard.

The Mystic might say this: The Equinox of the Gods has come
as it does every two thousand years, installing new Officers and
Rites, and sweeping away the darkness of the old ways. Where once
blazed the Cross of Suffering as the Sun of Beauty now there is the
Crowned and Conquering Child, whose message is not of salvation from
without but Grace from Within, the Kingdom of Heaven that is within
you (as the phrase survives in the corrupted Gnostic Gospels that
appear in the Christian Bible). Through all the Æons there is
one thread of tradition and one Great White Brotherhood whose
immortal spiritual Chiefs share the Wisdom of their Teaching with
humanity. The Christians could not destroy the Gnosis and now the
Initiates of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis have embraced the formula
propounded at the new Equinox with Joy and Love in their hearts.